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Odessa Minerals Limited (ASX:ODE) (“Odessa” or the “Company”) is pleased to provide a further update on the exploration program underway at its Yinnetharra Lithium Project at Lockier Range in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia.
Highlights:
- First assay results confirm fertility of Robinson Bore pegmatites to host lithium-bearing minerals
- >16,500m of pegmatites mapped at Robinson Bore
- First rock chip assays of pegmatites at Robinson Bore return up to:
- 1097ppm Li2O
- 10 other samples above 500ppm Li2O
- Highly-elevated key lithium-pegmatite pathfinders including:
- > 2000ppm Rb in four pegmatites
- 672ppm Cs
- 212ppm Ta
- 2970ppm Be
- Soil sampling complete - assay results pending
- Sampling in other pegmatite fields including Central Pegmatite Field, pending assay
Robinson Bore Lithium Pegmatite Targets
The Robinson Bore pegmatite field is one of four mapped pegmatite fields at the Lockier Range Project, located proximal to Delta Lithium’s Yinnetharra lithium discovery. Robinson Bore contains >16,500 metres of mapped pegmatites (Figure 1). Recent rock sampling results from pegmatites have demonstrated their fertility to host lithium-bearing minerals. Previous soil sampling results have shown extensive lithium anomalies over 4 x 2km.
Recent rock chip sampling aimed to identify highly fractionated and fertile pegmatites within the Robinson Bore pegmatite field through feldspar and mica multi-element analysis, as well as whole-rock pegmatite analysis. The Company has successfully identified a 2.5km-long northwest-trending corridor of fractionated pegmatites coincident with a lithium-in-soil anomaly (Figure 2). Peak Li2O in rock was 1097 ppm. A further 10 samples returned anomalous Li2O values above 500pm, with coincident elevated pathfinders of Cs-Ta-Be (Figure 3).
David Lenigas, Executive Director of Odessa, said: “Highly promising first assay results are in from our extensive rock chip and soil sampling programme at our Yinnetharra Lockier Range Project. The K/Rb ratios from some of our samples are showing that we are in or near to the sweet spot for lithium mineralisation and we are already seeing some strong lithium indicators coming through. The majority of more than 16km of mapped pegmatites at Robinson Bore sub-crop, with vast areas concealed by cover material. The Company is awaiting the assay results from a 100m x 100m infill soil sampling programme to identify the extent of the potential blind, fertile pegmatites. The soil sample results will be of particular importance at the northern end of the fractionation trend, where the most fractionated pegmatites have been discovered, but rarely outcrop.”
Figure 1: Principal pegmatite target areas within the Lockier Range Project showing the extent of mapped pegmatites underlain by gridded soil results coded by Li2O ppm (refer company announcements dated 14 July 2023 & 21st August 2023).
Figure 2: Rock chips from pegmatites coded by K/Rb elemental ratios underlain by gridded soil results coded by Li2O ppm (refer company announcements dated 14 July 2023 & 21st August 2023). Pegmatite targets highlighted.
Figure 3: All rock chip samples across the Robinson Bore Prospect coded by Li2O ppm underlain by gridded soil results coded by Li2O ppm (refer company announcements dated 14 July 2023 & 21st August 2023). Pegmatite targets highlighted.
Lockier Range Project Location
Odessa’s Lockier Range Lithium and Rare Earth Element (“REE”) Project covers a large area of 125km2 within its substantial Gascoyne tenement package of +3,000 km2; and is ideally located:
- Adjoining Minerals 260’s “Aston” Lithium project with extensive anomalies
- ~8.5km southwest of Delta Lithium’s “Jameson” lithium pegmatite discovery
- ~15km west of Reach Resources’ “Morrissey Hill” lithium pegmatite discovery
- ~25km west of Delta Lithium’s “Yinnetharra” lithium pegmatite discovery
- ~40km west of Voltaic Strategic Resources’ pegmatite discovery
- ~60-70km south of Hastings Technologies’ and Dreadnought Resources’ rare earth projects
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This article includes content from Odessa Minerals, licensed for the purpose of publishing on Investing News Australia. This article does not constitute financial product advice. It is your responsibility to perform proper due diligence before acting upon any information provided here. Please refer to our full disclaimer here.
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Odessa Minerals
Overview
Odessa Minerals (ASX:ODE) is an ASX-listed junior mining and exploration company focusing on uranium exploration in the Gascoyne Region of Western Australia via its three projects— Lyndon Project, Relief Well and Gascoyne East.
Odessa Mineral’s pivot towards uranium and away from lithium is a smart move, especially in the current environment of high uranium prices. Uranium prices have soared to their highest point since 2008, surpassing US$100 per pound. This upward trend is expected to continue due to the ongoing supply and demand imbalance for uranium. With its portfolio of uranium projects, Odessa is strategically positioned to capitalize on these robust market fundamentals.
Odessa Minerals’ projects in the Gascoyne Region of Western Australia totalling >3,000km2
The company’s flagship Lyndon project is immediately adjacent to Paladin Energy’s 15.6 million pounds (Mlbs) U3O8 Carley Bore uranium project. The Lyndon Project has identified highly significant uranium intersections with some rock chip sample assay results showing exceptional grades up to 6,612 parts per millions (ppm) U3O8 at the Baltic Bore and Jailor Bore prospects. Odessa plans to begin drilling at the target areas in 2024.
The other two projects—Relief Well and Gascoyne East—have shown significant potential for uranium. An extensive palaeochannel stretching over 8 kilometers has been verified at Relief Well, offering the potential for uranium mineralization in a roll-front style. Odessa is planning a drilling program to test roll-front uranium mineralization at Relief Well.
The Gascoyne East project is one of the most under-explored areas in the Gascoyne Province. The company has identified multiple gold, copper and uranium targets for the project, and drilling has been planned for 2024.
The company is in the early stages of its operations, making it attractive for investors looking to get exposure to uranium assets in a tier-1 mining region like Gascoyne. The high insider holding, at nearly 28 percent, is an encouraging sign for investors as it aligns management’s interests with those of the shareholders.
Company Highlights
- Odessa Minerals is an ASX-listed, uranium exploration company with a large holding covering over 3,000 sq. km. in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia. The company has three key projects in the area – Lyndon, Relief Well, Gascoyne East.
- The company focuses on advancing uranium prospects at its flagship project, Lyndon. Lyndon is adjacent to Paladin Energy’s Carley Bore uranium project, which has a resource base of 15.6 Mlbs U3O8.
- Initial review of the Lyndon project has identified highly significant uranium intersections at the Jailor Bore, Baltic Bore and Ben Hur prospects, with some exceptional grades reaching up to 6,600 ppm U3O8.
- The Relief Well Uranium Project has revealed significant palaeochannel-hosted uranium mineralization typically amenable to low-cost recovery. The company will move forward with drill planning and seek approvals to conduct drilling at the Relief Well prospect.
- Uranium prices have surged to their highest level since 2008, exceeding US$100 per pound. This upward trend is anticipated to persist due to the tight supply and demand balance for uranium. Odessa's portfolio of uranium projects is well-positioned to benefit from strong fundamentals.
- The Gascoyne East project has extensive gold, copper and uranium targets that were identified during the recent airborne survey. The company is planning air-core and RC drilling for the project in 2024.
- The Company’s senior leadership team is well-experienced in the mining sector and has significant ownership in the company at nearly 28 percent. This is an encouraging sign for investors as it aligns the management’s interest with that of the shareholders.
Key Projects
Lyndon Project
The Lyndon project tenements total 1,000km2 of highly prospective ground for REE/lithium exploration. The project has also shown signs of significant uranium potential, making the company pivot towards it and aligning its priorities to uranium exploration. The initial fieldwork on the project has yielded impressive results.
Jailor Bore, Baltic Bore and Ben Hur prospects showed significant calcrete-hosted uranium mineralization at the surface. The findings at the Balti Bore and Jailor Bore included 12 rock chips with assays revealing over 1,000 ppm U3O8 and five rock chips with assays showing more than 1,000 ppm V2O5 (vanadium oxide).
Carnotite (uranium) mineralisation within siliceous calcrete at the Jailor Bore prospect in sample XT0938.
Baltic Bore prospect: The Baltic Bore prospect area features several radiometric anomalies linked to calcrete terraces, extending over a strike length of 2.6 km. Baltic yielded a noteworthy 6,612 ppm U3O8 while also uncovering 2,132 ppm V2O5 in sample XT0970. An additional eight samples show rock chip assays exceeding 1,000 ppm U3O8. Historically, little attention has been paid to the Baltic Bore prospects compared to Jailor Bore. However, the assay results at Baltic Bore indicate significant potential for high-grade uranium discovery.
Jailor Bore target: Jailor Bore encompasses more than 2 km of uranium radiometric anomalies along its strike length. Surface mineralization has been observed at this target, with four rock chip assays exceeding 1,000 ppm U3O8, with a maximum of 4,489 ppm U3O8. Additionally, high vanadium levels were found to be associated with uranium mineralization, with rock chip XT0929 showing up to 1,541 ppm V2O5.
Ben Hur, Giant and Red Hill Uranium Targets: The Ben Hur, Giant and Red Hill prospects exhibit calcrete-type uranium mineralization similar to that found at the Baltic Bore and Jailor Bore. Historical exploration reported intersections up to 2 meters @ 411 ppm U3O8 from 4 meters.
Relief Well Project
VTEM survey data has confirmed the presence of a palaeochannel at the Relief Well prospect with a strike length of greater than 8 km that remains open to the south. The palaeochannel-hosted uranium mineralization at the Relief Well prospect is typically amenable to low-cost in-situ leach recovery. Relief Well is situated directly along the strike and serves as an upstream extension of the paleochannel that hosts Paladin Energy’s Carley Bore, which contains a 15.6 Mlbs U3O8 resource. The company will now move forward with drill planning and will seek approvals to conduct drilling at the Relief Well prospect.
Gascoyne East Project
The Gascoyne East Project tenements cover 2,108 sq. km. of exploration licenses. The Gascoyne East project is one of the most under-explored areas of the Gascoyne Province. The company has identified multiple gold, copper and uranium targets for the project, and is planning a two-phase air-core drilling program. Phase 1 air core drilling with hole spacings ranging from 200 meters to 400 meters aims to update the basement geology model and rank targets for the follow-up Phase 2 drill program, which will test for mineralization at depth. Phase 1 drilling is expected to commence in Q3 2024.
Management Team
Zane Lewis – Non-Executive Director
Zane Lewis is the principal and co-founder of SmallCap Corporate, a corporate advisory firm that specializes in providing corporate advice and compliance administration to public companies. Leveraging his extensive financial and corporate experience from previous roles, Lewis brings a wealth of knowledge to the board. Additionally, he holds the title of Fellow of the Governance Institute of Australia and serves as a non-executive director of Lion Energy (ASX:LIO) and Kairos Minerals (ASX:KAI).
David Lenigas – Executive Director
David Lenigas is a mining engineer holding a Western Australian First Class Mine Managers Certificate. He boasts vast corporate experience, having served as chairman and chief executive officer of numerous leading stock exchanges worldwide, overseeing various business sectors. He has also held senior financial and management roles in publicly listed and private enterprises across Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and Africa.
Lisa Wells – Non-Executive Director
Lisa Wells brings 26 years of experience as an exploration geologist, having worked across various commodities such as diamonds, bulk commodities, gold, and base metals. Previously, she was a senior geologist at United Kimberley Diamonds, overseeing the Phillips Range diamond bulk sampling program at Aries South in Central Kimberley.
Wells has extensive expertise in environmental and permitting approvals, coordinating trial mining operations, conducting feasibility studies, and managing projects across a range of commodities, including diamonds, gold, phosphate and base metals.
Currently, Wells is a non-executive director of Territory Minerals, a gold company with projects in North Queensland. She holds a BAppSc. in Geology from Curtin University.
Robbie Featherby – Company Secretary
Robbie Featherby is a corporate advisor at SmallCap Corporate, a specialized boutique firm offering company secretarial, CFO and transaction management services to both listed and unlisted companies. Additionally, he is the company secretary at Victory Goldfields (ASX:1VG), Cosmos Exploration and Volt Resources.
Unconformity Uranium Drill Targets Identified from 2024 Geophysical Data
Key Highlights
- Final data received and interpretation completed for the ground electromagnetic geophysical surveys from the winter 2024 program at the Marshall and North Millennium projects.
- Several conductive anomalies identified at Marshall, located above and below the unconformity, consistent with regional exploration model.
- Stacked anomalies concurrently with multigenerational geophysical data provides a base to assess the exploration targets and refine drillhole targets.
- The projects are located 15 kilometres from the majority Cameco owned Millennium deposit, and just 40km from the world class McArthur River mine.
- Basin remains funded for the next round of field exploration.
The ground electromagnetic successfully identified 3 main targets which confirms the geological and exploration model. Of note is Target 1 (Figure 1), where modelled EM plates below the unconformity align with a sandstone ZTEM anomaly, which is interpreted to be alteration within sandstone. The identification of these targets is encouraging and consistent with regional trends in the southeastern Athabasca and provides increased confidence in drill hole targeting. Basin is currently reviewing options and priorities of how to progress exploration of these confirmed targets.
Basin’s Managing Director, Pete Moorhouse, commented:
“Conducting ground geophysical surveys on Marshall and North Millennium was a milestone in advancing these underexplored projects in Basin’s uranium portfolio. The form of these anomalies is highly encouraging given the proximity to some of the world’s largest uranium deposits.”
Key results
Following the encouraging conductive anomalism highlighted by the 2023 3D inversion of two historic airborne Electromagnetics (Z‐Tipper Axis) (“ZTEM”) datasets partially covering the current North Millennium and Marshall projects3,4, Basin contracted Discovery International Geophysics5 to carry out ground Stepwise Moving Loop Transient Electromagnetic (‘Ground EM’) surveys on areas of immediate interest within the Projects.
Figure 1 Three main anomalies shown from 2024 ground EM, in plan view (top diagrams) and cross- section looking northeast (bottom diagram). The ground EM anomalies are displayed with the modelled plates against the historical ZTEM data.
The 2024 Ground EM survey data returned six conductive anomaly picks producing three main target areas (Figure 1). The anomalies correlate strongly with the southern edge of the circular ZTEM conductive anomaly at Marshall and the interpreted northern edge of the circular anomaly identified in the historic data. A weaker EM pick was also interpreted centred between the two prominent ZTEM conductivity anomalies.
Three-dimensional modelling using Maxwell produced six electromagnetic conductive plates within the basement stratigraphy, all below the unconformity (Figure 1). The two southeastern plates are clearly aligning with a conductive sandstone ZTEM anomaly identified from the historic data, which is above the interpreted unconformity. This is interpreted as potential basal sandstone alteration proximal to the EM anomalies and constitutes a high-priority drill target area, refer figure 2.
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This article includes content from Basin Energy, licensed for the purpose of publishing on Investing News Australia. This article does not constitute financial product advice. It is your responsibility to perform proper due diligence before acting upon any information provided here. Please refer to our full disclaimer here.
Airborne EM over Multiple Targets on Ti-Tree Project
- Augustus Minerals has contracted UTS Geophysics to conduct a VTEM Max survey over several Copper, Cu-Ni-PGE, Zn-Pb-Ag and Uranium targets along the money Intrusion and within proximity of the prospective 85k long Ti-Tree Shear.
- The surveys will cover:
- The Money Intrusion, prospective for Cu-Ni-PGE mineralisation.
- Copper Ridge and Nics Bore over anomalous Copper Drilling results
- The Coo Creek prospect where drilling by Augustus in 2023 identified strongly anomalous Zn-Pb-Ag mineralisation.
- The Munaballya Well North area which shows potential for economic Uranium mineralisation.
- The surveys will help to advance the untapped potential of the Ti-Tree project to host economic mineralisation of multiple commodities.
Andrew Ford, GM Exploration
“The VTEM survey will provide key targeting data over three highly prospective and different prospects with potential for multiple commodities. Whilst the high prospectivity for copper mineralisation has been well documented, the addition of uranium and Broken Hill base metal style mineralisation highlights the quality of the underexplored Ti-Tree project”.
VTEM
UTS Geophysics has been engaged to conduct a helicopter borne VTEM Max survey comprising 646-line km over three separate survey areas. The system is excellent for locating discrete conductive anomalies as well as mapping lateral and vertical variations in resistivity which helps map structure, alteration and rock type. The system also collects magnetic data through a caesium magnetometer. The transmitter/receiver loop is suspended on a cable approximately 40m below the helicopter (Figure 1).
Figure 1 VTEM Max helicopter deployed electromagnetic survey arrangement.
Figure 2 Prospects and VTEM Survey areas.
Money Intrusion
The Money Intrusion, which has proven potential to host Ni-Cu-Co-PGE (platinum group elements), is part of the regional Mundine Well Dolerite Suite, a regionally extensive dolerite (strike length >80km). This extensive mafic intrusion, which is comprised of a variety of lithologies, including gabbro in the core, olivine dolerite on the chilled lower contact or keel and fine-grained dolerite on the outer edges. Mapping, aeromagnetics and multi-spectral imagery show that the Money Intrusion within the Ti-Tree Project covers a strike length greater than 16km, reaching widths >600m in the north of E09/23241.
Click here for the full ASX Release
This article includes content from Augustus Minerals, licensed for the purpose of publishing on Investing News Australia. This article does not constitute financial product advice. It is your responsibility to perform proper due diligence before acting upon any information provided here. Please refer to our full disclaimer here.
Odessa Minerals Investor Kit
- Corporate info
- Insights
- Growth strategies
- Upcoming projects